About a month ago one of my coworkers and I talked about his cherry shrimp tank at home and I fell in love. He offered to hook me up with a few in his tank including multiple berried females. Unfortunately although my 60 gallon tank is mostly perfect for shimp, I also have three large mollies. My suspicion is that they ate all the cherries.

Today I decided I wanted to re-attempt this adventure, so I went to a well-known local aquarium store. I knew my loose specifications:

  1. Had to fit on my bookshelf, so no taller than 9” and probably no more than 3-7 gallons.
  2. Live plants that require no CO2 or other fancy care. I also wanted some christmas or java moss for my shrimp.
  3. Light to provide plenty of growth for the plants.
  4. Rimless glass tank since it’s going to be small and I am willing to spend slightly more to have a prettier tank.

Guy at the store was super helpful and this is what I ended up buying:

I already had at home: extra airline tubing, check valves, air pump w/ 2 outputs (adjustable; I set it to lowest setting), Seachem Stability (bacteria starter).

Here’s what it looks like:

Bookshelf shrimp tank

After a few weeks of cycling and testing the water hardness (cherry shrimp are most suceptible to lack of hardness) I’ll ask my coworker for some of his extra shrimp again. Hopefully it’ll go better this time :)